- Published on
It is 1,000 years in the future, and civilization as we know it has ended. What is left over is a world of ruins, mutant creatures, and portals to other dimensions. Vestiges of mankind have survived, and a post-apocalyptic religion is dominant. This is the world of Estuary, the darkly majestic new album by US black metal band Wolves in the Throne Room.
I am glad the concept of the album is spelled out by the band's promotional materials, because I don't think I would have fully grasped the central fiction of this release by listening alone. There's no question that the vibe of the world laid out above is present in the music. Across Estuary's six tracks, there is a clear mix of the natural and unnatural, a tension between warm and organic instrumentation and cold, volatile industrial noise. There are heavy and ominous riffs aplenty broken up with quieter moments when soaring keyboards come to the front and other moments primal percussion becomes the focus. Every track grows and shifts across their substantial length (each averaging about eight minutes), incorporating the mainstay elements of black metal but fleshing out the sound with post metal structures and atmospheric psych rock flourishes. The world of the album rears its decaying head at unexpected moments, such as at the end of "The Orca Cliffs" when the song ends, goes silent, and the sound of some ancient, still-functional machine of the old people spools up, bathing the listener in the sound of its cycling inner workings.
Wolves in the Throne Room have always been masters of mood and place - somehow I've always been able to hear the misty forests of their Pacific Northwest home in their music. If you listen to Estuary without any idea of the concept behind it, the sonic landscape of the album will likely still recall a ruined, mostly wild world for the majority of listeners. The lyrics to most songs, however, are abstract enough that they will give listeners only the vaguest sense of story being told on Estuary.
The opening verse of "Ghosts Among the Obelisks" is the clearest moment of lyrical storytelling on the album: "Animals walk the earth / Free again among machines cold and forgotten / Fear not the evil of men / Their dominion dies". While there are plenty of other moments on the record that paint the post-apocalyptic picture ("Dark isthmus of decay /
Corroded steel / Gray wolves make their homes in the wreckage / Vultures circle their feast below" from the title track), some of the other elements of the story, such as portals and mutants, are much harder to identify within the lyrics.
I am, of course, a writer, and as such I tend to focus on song lyrics. It makes me happy when I can parse meaning out of obscure phrases and make declarative statements like "This may be what they say, but this is what it means!" In other words, wanting a little more clarity in the storytelling from this album is very much a "me thing" and likely won't bother most people. And to be fair, it doesn't even bother me very much. While the actual narrative could be crisper, the vibe is immaculate. It's a sonically entrancing album, darkly heavy, epic and unpredictable. Listening to Estuary is like opening a door into the wild far future world of the album. That world may be a little confusing and challenging to explore, but maybe that's the entire point. In a world like the one described by Estuary, there would be no easy answers, no Google Maps to help you find your way through. You just have to have faith and hope for the best.
Wolves in the Throne Room's Estuary is out October 23 via Relapse Records.